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On the left, Ramleh —a little pleasure station, where the Alexandrians go to take their sea baths and refuge in summer, to escape from the overwhelming heat of the city—spreads out its walls, bleached and grilled by the sun. What is striking in this spectacle, not remarkable of itself, is the novel tint of the firmament, the ground, the trees, and the houses.
At the sight of those old walls, baked and rebaked by the heat, whose red hue recalls the pictures of Marilhat, you recognize the East. The entrance of the great basin is imposing: it was particularly so the day of my arrival. Every fort that covered the beach fired salvos of cannon; the ships were decked with flags; the sailors on the yard-arms shouted enthusiastically; the military bands launched forth O N arriving at Alexandria , most travellers, especially when the fatigues of the journey have disposed them for philosophical reflections, struck with the entirely modern character and little extent of this city, formerly so celebrated, write a few eloquent pages on the versatility of human things and on the violent revolutions that destroy temples, palaces, gymnasiums, and libraries, to replace them by European houses of rather bad taste.
Never has a subject, we must admit, better offered itself to developments of this kind. However little the imagination may be stocked with history, philosophy, art, and politics, the souvenirs of Alexander, of Ammonius, of Plotinus, of Porphyrius, of Amru, of Omar, etc.
This is what has become then of this city, which passed in antiquity for the most beautiful in the world! It was still beautiful when Amru led into it his victorious army. Amru had good reasons for admiring Alexandria ; he had not taken it without striking a blow; he even narrowly escaped paying for his conquest with his life. The Arabs came to inherit this civilisation, and to bear it on the arms of their victorious soldiers as far as into the heart of Spain; but the fatal principle of Islamism would not permit them to accept the final consequences of it, and it was, in fact, a germ of death that Amru introduced into Alexandria when he made his triumphal entry into it amidst universal enthusiasm, the first Friday of the month of Moharrem, of the year 20 of the Hegira, whilst the solemn prayers of the Mussulmans rising towards heaven rendered thanks to Allah for so brilliant a success.
This germ of death has singularly developed since: Alexandria is now no more than a little town without character, either European or Arabian, but holding an intermediate position between the West and the East. It is the centre of the commerce and the business of all Egypt, and if it is not the official capital, since the Viceroy resides at Cairo , it is at least the real capital of the European colonies, which, through infiltration, are in the way of making the conquest of this rich and fruitful country as surely, perhaps, as the Arabs did formerly by their arms.
It is there that is established the Court of Appeal of the new judicial organisation, that is to say, decidedly the greatest political force in contemporary Egypt. It Everything is changed!
Alexandria , at present, is filled with carriages—private carriages and hired carriages, which closely resemble our cabs. The differences are in their favour: they are admirably kept, and have for drivers, instead of a coachman coarse and rough, a fine Arab clad in a long robe, white or blue, his head covered with a scarlet tarbouche, who invites you to take your place with a wonderful volubility of seductive phrases.
I have already said how much I was surprised at the noisy character of the Egyptians. The Italians do not give themselves half so much movement. They do not use a quarter of the words that these utter in the space of a minute! There is in the streets and in the public places a perpetual going and coming, a tumult and deafening shouting. On walking about, the day of my arrival, a large garden surrounded with high walls, I was astonished at the noise rising all round me, and which never ceased.
One might have thought that the waves of the sea were coming and breaking with a roar against the walls. The Arabs, in fact, remain for whole hours crouching and silent; they work the whole day in the bazaars without opening their lips.
But then, indeed, they make up for it so soon as they find themselves together or in the presence of foreigners. The markets of Cairo and Alexandria resound unceasingly with the most frightful uproar. The Arabic language, with its hoarse and hard sounds, contributes perhaps in producing that sensation of noise. In the mouths of the children, and especially in the women's, it takes tones so sharp and screeching that one can hardly bear them.
Never have the Halles of Paris, or the barges of the washerwomen on the Seine, witnessed such broils as those that happen every day in the public places of Cairo and Alexandria. It is not at all uncommon to see there two old vixens, more hideous a hundred-fold than the Though half European, the city of Alexandria , however, gives a very true foretaste of the East. The Place des Consuls, the principal streets, and especially the popular quarters, are filled with Arabs, fellahs, Greeks, Albanians, Nubians, and negroes of every race.
This medley crowd presents a delightful spectacle in the sunshine. Already are presented the principal types, the principal costumes, which we shall see later on penetrating into the interior of Egypt.
All that, moves, bustles, and resounds in a strange tumult of sounds and colours. One begins also to admire the great variety of rags and tatters, which in the dazzling light of Egypt have an aspect so picturesque, sometimes even so imposing. I remember a fine youth, about twenty, coloured with an indefinite tint between yellow and chestnut, who was promenading haughtily in the Place des Consuls, wearing as sole costume a dirty rag split from top to bottom, before as well as behind, and which formed merely two long epaulettes falling over the arms.
He did not seem to suspect that it would have been preferable, at least according to our European The real interest of Alexandria is in the European colonies that reside there. There are two ways of regarding these colonies. If one is a severe moralist, if one experiences an invincible repulsion for speculations and speculators, if one mistrusts business transactions and those who make them too productive, the society of the European colonies becomes easily wearisome; but if one is simply a traveller, who wishes to amuse himself and gather from his travels agreeable impressions, it is quite different.
Then the European colonies are charming, and one cannot frequent them too assiduously. Few cities contain women so pretty as Alexandria.
The return from the Catholic mass and the Greek mass is celebrated; chairs are hired by those interested to assist at the almost interminable line of faces of rare perfection that passes every Sunday. The Greeks particularly are admirable; they become very soon a little corpulent, but it is the common lot of the Eastern women, and here at least this kind of charm is very highly esteemed.
Their eyes are very large and incomparably brilliant, their features of antique regularity, their pale complexion heightens the beauty of a It would be in vain, however, when night falls, if one were still to seek the two heroes of this extraordinary life, dressed as slaves, running through the streets, stopping at the doors and windows to laugh at the people, braving in mad pranks the insults and blows of the canaille , thinking only of love, fun, and pleasure.
All that has disappeared with the wonders of ancient Alexandria ; with the Jews, the dancers, and the dealers in green vegetables of Amru; with Arabian civilisation itself that Amru had brought, and which, like the rest, has fled for ever. It would need a very lively imagination to revive at night in modern Alexandria the souvenirs of a departed They are keepers charged to protect the merchandise against thieves—a precaution, as it appears, not at all useless.
At every quarter of an hour they utter a cry, which every one ought to repeat after the one that precedes him, and which, in being prolonged the whole length of the street, reaches the next, and is thus spread throughout the district. It is by these means the guardians prove that they are awake. A sheik who presides over their corporation passes at uncertain intervals, and administers some sharp lashes of the courbache to all those found asleep. These noises, which succeed regularly till morning, produce in the silence of the night a mysterious impression.
A newspaper correspondent, therefore, who, having It would be difficult to find one more picturesque and more charming. It connects Alexandria with the Nile and with Cairo , and serves as a highway for the internal commerce of Egypt. Certainly, few works have been more useful than those; but they have been executed, like everything that has been done for centuries in this unfortunate country, at the price of the cruellest sufferings.
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Alexandria wanted a canal. One little thinks besides, when promenading today near the Mahmoudieh Canal, of indulging in philanthropic regret and of deploring the misery of those who delved there. Nothing is more pleasing than the sight of this canal, which gives, for the first time, to the recently-landed voyager, the impression already complete of the East.
But to enjoy the pleasures of the trip, we must be free from sea-sickness. All dervishes are not slovenly and ignorant monks; they work not merely with their feet and their hands; they work also with their heads. Comparison of intrathecal dexmedetomidine with buprenorphine as adjuvant to bupivacaine in spinal asnaesthesia. On returning from Boolak to Cairo one meets almost always on the road several funerals. As soon as he Shimomura, N.
On the bank which serves for a promenade, a superb avenue of acacias and sycamores extends by a series of villas and gardens: these houses with barred windows and high walls, with vivid colours, red, yellow, and blue, belong mostly to rich pachas. They are the first harems we fall in with in Egypt, and however disposed one may be not to surrender oneself to vulgar emotions, it is difficult not to experience a particular sensation in view of these asylums, mysterious and strange, and full of surprises and illusions for the European imagination.
The other bank of the Mahmoudieh Canal, much less brilliant, is still more interesting to the eyes of Europeans. It is the beginning of Egypt. Poor villages built with Nile mud extend in the distance: the hovels of the fellahs, kinds of earthen cubes of grey colour, roofed merely with the dried leaves of the sorgho, are there grouped in indescribable disorder. Around them, children, naked or almost naked, gambol in the dust or in the mud; lank-looking dogs I had for a travelling companion one little imbued with poesy.
As a very distinguished naturalist, he has been, I must admit, of very great service to me; for without him I should never have suspected the existence of half the natural productions of Egypt in the animal as well as in the vegetable kingdom. Alas, I cannot praise myself for having rendered him in another order of ideas a At the Pyramids, whilst I was evoking the souvenir of forty centuries, he was talking seriously with a group of Arabs, to glean information about some curious animals that are found in the neighbourhood; but as the dialect of these Arabs was a mixture of English, French, Italian, Greek, and all the indigenous dialects, Science was near upon the point of enregistering one of those formidable errors which give her so much trouble afterwards to get rid of!
My companion believed they had offered him a goat without horns, what seemed to him very curious; but, on the contrary, it was a cat without horns they meant; in other words, a lynx of the commonest kind. Before dispelling this error, what interminable discussions! The Arabs could not understand that a harmless cat should excite so much astonishment: my companion, on the other hand, ill explained himself, when they spoke of a goat without horns as being a very common beast.
He imagined himself on the point of making a fine discovery, which would compensate for the little success of his travels; for, oh illusion! I am indebted to this companion of an original mind for having visited in detail all the interesting gardens of Cairo and Alexandria. The first thing that struck me, at a horticulturist's in Alexandria , was a magnificent row of pots, which appeared to have been attended to, and kept up, with admirable order, and which contained nothing but grass.